If authors spent proportionally as much time and effort on the rest of the novel as they do on the opening lines, Jonathan Franzen's Freedom would probably seem like a rushed job.
Here you can view the result of that labour, not only in isolation from the rest of the book, but also in conjunction with the efforts of their peers.
SelectionThe original intention was a collection of opening lines from “literary” novels. To this end, and with the help of the Oxford Companion to English Literature, a working list was compiled. However, this was almost immediately augmented with additional titles.
So the very occasional short story gets an honourable mention, even if mostly to accommodate Chekhov.
Writers such as Rankin and Le Carré must at times feel irked by their exclusion from the literary pantheon. To redress this apartheid, a selection from genre fiction — westerns/crime/SF/thrillers/etc. — has been included. An expansion of these is not ruled out.
It would also have been remiss to include only novels written in English. You'll find a selection of international classics which, in translation, sit comfortably on all our bookshelves — Camus beside Carroll, Dostoevsky beside Dickens, Tolstoy alongside Trollope, etc.
Likewise, the inclusion of first lines from seminal works of non-fiction seemed appropriate. Scattered throughout are scientific works that have crossed categories (Darwin, Origin of the Species) and graced coffee tables (S. Hawking, Brief History of Time); philosophical blockbusters (L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus) so dense that I admit to turning only a few pages; plays half remembered from schooldays (Twelfth Night) and slept through in darkened theatres (Marlowe, Dr Faustus); books indispensable (the Bible), others to be read only in desperation on desert islands (Beowulf); works by the good (St John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul) and not-so-good (Hitler, Mein Kampf).
The occasional idiosyncratic entry may well perplex (Kenneth Patchen, Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer; Gil Orlovitz, Milkbottle H). Indulge me. In my youth/hippy days, the bookshops of Charing Cross Road were (and maybe still are) a world apart from the Waterstones' supermarkets. Recommended purchases of New Directions and Calder and Boyars imprints were immediately, no doubt ostentatiously, put on view, and maybe even read in the nearby Bunjie's coffee shop on the way to Les Cousins folk club.
Obviously there are many thousands of books of dubious literary merit but with killer first lines; you probably won't find them here. Conversely, some — maybe too many — essential classics have openings so banal their inclusion is justified only by the author's pedigree.
The OLs themselves were acquired firstly from my own collection of books, then, in no particular order, from friends, libraries, and bookshops; Project Gutenberg was invaluable for those OOC/OOP titles otherwise existing only behind the glass doors of old mahogany bookcases.
If the opening helps sell a novel, the closing lines may confirm that it was money well spent. A mediocre start can be redeemed by what follows, but a poor ending will linger like an ill-digested meal. Only sometimes does the author get both just right (Orwell, 1984). Ask who impresses me most, and I would have to say Eliot. No, not George, but T.S. — The Waste Land and J. Alfred Prufrock; Burnt Norton and East Coker — perhaps the great man missed his calling.
So here are one hundred last lines. Some light and sweet as a petit four; some dark and bitter as the espresso.
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